Türk Biyokimya Dergisi (May 2007)
Serum Total and Lipid Bound Sialic Acid Levels in Patients With Benign and Nonmelanom Malignant Skin Tumors
Abstract
It has been reported that sialic acid containing oligosaccharides play an important rolein the adhesion between cancer cells and endothelial cells and metastatic potential of tumorcells is proportional to cell surface sialylation. In the present study, we investigatedwhether there is a change in serum total and lipid bound sialic acid levels of patientswith benign and non-melanom malignant skin tumors and, evaluated whether the measurementof sialic acid levels may be useful clinically in distinguishing patients with benignskin tumors from those with non-melanom malignant skin tumors. In this study, 27patients with malignant skin tumors (16 men, age 50.78 ± 12.46 years), 39 patients withbenign skin tumors (17 men, age 48.59 ± 16.23 years) were included. Serum total andlipid bound sialic acid determination was performed by the thiobarbituric acid methoddescribed by Warren and, the resorsinol method described by Katopodis, respectively.Student’s T test and Z test were used to analyze the results. The mean serum total andlipid bound sialic acid levels were found to be 63.01 ± 11.89 mg/dl and 15.77 ± 2.44mg/dl, respectively in patients with benign skin tumors; and 65.95 ± 7.30 mg/dl and16.70 ± 3.80 mg/dl, respectively in patients with non-melanom malignant skin tumors.Serum total sialic acid and lipid bound sialic acid of patients with benign skin tumorswere not different from those of patients with non-melanom malignant skin tumors. Thepercentage of lipid bound sialic acid was found to be 25.3 in patients with non-melanommalignant skin tumors, 25 in patients with benign skin tumors. There was no significantdifference between the value of lipid bound sialic acid percentage in these groups. Ourfinding that there is no significant difference between serum total and lipid-bound sialicacid levels of patients with non melanom malignant skin tumors which are not able tometastase and patients with benign skin tumors supports the studies reporting that sialicacids play an important role in metastases.
